Education 4.0
Education 4.0 as an Imperative for
Industry 4.0.
The world today is increasingly getting connected and technology continues to shape every area of our lives. Technology is fast transforming every sphere of our existence. Education is no exception. Integrating technology in education offers unlimited opportunities for the development of human capital.
In this era of transformation, education technology is disrupting the classroom experience to shape delivery in the 21st century for better outcomes. Access and quality education are critical to improving learning outcomes foundational for children to acquire the right knowledge, skills, and overall cognitive abilities. Ultimately, a creative and productive citizenry is, therefore, a product of intentional investment to rethink education by leveraging the powerful medium of technology to increase access, equity, and inclusion.
Adoption and application of educational technologies are not without difficulties. Nonetheless, the barriers also serve as challenges to overcome and unleash the full potential to catalyse equal access and opportunities for all.
This Smart Lab Project is targeted at teachers and learners in St Peter’s School and will make it possible for all students to have access to digital technology and communication tools for learning. It seeks to empower teachers to create and deliver learning content using digital technology. Digital learning is learning facilitated by a combination of technology, content and learning. The project will cover the following: –
- Distribution of broadband enabled digital devices for all learners and teachers.
- Train the Trainer Module (Teacher 4.0) to develop the capacity of teachers and relevant implementers
- Development and provision of appropriate content for digital learning.
- Promotion of research and development
- Opening up participation in the education system to the community through school websites, emails, and blogs
- Junior Aspire Curriculum covering:- Coding Robotics & Artificial Intelligence, Entrepreneurship, Debating & Spelling Bee.
As automation depletes jobs and innovation replaces jobs, the key question is whether students in our environment are being empowered with the right sort of skills to take advantage of the opportunities that innovation presents.
Gaps in schooling and academic skills will also be exacerbated by changes in the world of work that demand a workforce with a broader set of skills that include critical thinking, collaborative problem solving, information literacy, and creativity.
By 2030 it is predicted that 2 billion jobs will be automated, half of all those in existence today.
As the world enters the 4th industrial age, with a transition from traditional skills-based jobs to jobs meeting the demands of Digital economy, it has been imperative for us to re-think education and building skills for the new digital economy and possibly explore way of fusing entrepreneurship into the curriculum.
Eight critical characteristics in learning content and experiences have been identified to define high-quality learning in the Fourth Industrial Revolution— “Education 4.0”:
- Global citizenship skills: Include content that focuses on building awareness about the wider world, sustainability and playing an active role in the global community.
- Innovation and creativity skills: Include content that fosters skills required for innovation, including complex problem-solving, analytical thinking, creativity and systems analysis.
- Technology skills: Include content that is based on developing digital skills, including programming, digital responsibility and the use of technology.
- Interpersonal skills: Include content that focuses on interpersonal emotional intelligence, including empathy, cooperation, negotiation, leadership and social awareness.
- Personalized and self-paced learning: Move from a system where learning is standardized, to one based on the diverse individual needs of each learner, and flexible enough to enable each learner to progress at their own pace.
- Accessible and inclusive learning: Move from a system where learning is confined to those with access to school buildings to one in which everyone has access to learning and is therefore inclusive.
- Problem-based and collaborative learning: Move from process-based to project- and problem-based content delivery, requiring peer collaboration and more closely mirroring the future of work.
- Lifelong and student-driven learning: Move from a system where learning and skilling decrease over one’s lifespan to one where everyone continuously improves on existing skills and acquires new ones based on their individual needs.